Is the Boston real estate mortgage spike real?
Boston Condos for Sale and Apartments for Rent
Is the Boston real estate mortgage spike real?
When mortgage purchase activity shot up 25 percent in early January, some industry leaders hailed it as a turning point for home sales.
Maybe not.
For the week ending Jan. 27, applications for mortgages to buy homes dropped a seasonally adjusted 10 percent from week before, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported. Homeowner requests to refinance fell 7 percent, the MBA’s weekly survey found.
The drops came even as mortgage rates were flat. The average contract interest rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage with conforming loan balances — $726,200 or below — was 6.19 percent, a smidge below the 6.20 percent from a week earlier.
The specter of interest rate hikes still looms large, as the Federal Reserve raised rates by a quarter point on Wednesday and is probably not done fighting inflation. But the discrepancy between Treasury yields and mortgage rates is narrowing, which could help prospective buyers.
Real estate experts predicted purchase activity would pick up as winter gives way to spring.
